Prompts: Sudden and Bright

When I assign writing prompts in creative writing classes, I usually do them alongside my students. As I hope is the case for the class, sometimes one of them really grows some legs or becomes an unexpected little jewel of a thing, sudden and bright, like the two short-shorts that landed during a campus writers’ group meeting, fully formed things, and found a home in Passages North earlier this year. I’m wrestling with one of those rare birds right now—something that feels like a short story. If I’m honest, all short stories are rare birds for me. This one is a happy accident born of a trash can prompt and the whims of an online character generator.

But the problem of something interesting arriving means I can’t put it aside when something’s not right. I can only tug and tug and tug at it, like trying to clear brush from a path. For this story, that means re-writing the opening three pages in no fewer than four combinations of point of view and tense over the course of two and a half days, only to arrive at the (quite commonly used) point of view I find least natural in my own writing practice. That the right POV for this story is the one I try to avoid the most is surely a kind of poetic justice for the peculiar combinations I ask my students to adopt for the sake of exercising new creative muscles.

But this is also the thing I love best about writing: when something unexpected and good happens simply because I’ve been willing to wait, or try something. Not scrapping a piece altogether because it’s not quite right yet, not pulling a submission even though it’s been out a long time, not letting myself slide on using those seven minutes of class time to write something, rather than sending an e-mail. And all of my best revision work has come in combination of the two: wait, then try something—especially something I’ve been hoping to avoid or dancing around.

In the case of this short story opening, I don’t know that I’ve waited much by my traditional standards, but I’ve waited long enough to want to come back to it. The inevitable answer came as I drove to work yesterday, and the actual rewriting pushed forward the moment dinner was done. I tried. It worked. The path is clear to proceed.

If you like the idea of trying some things in your writing practice, join me at Barrelhouse Magazine’s Conversations & Connections conference on October 29! There will be a full in-person event schedule in beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the campus of Chatham University, and there will also be a concurrent fully online track, if you’d prefer that! I’ll be running a session called “Prismatics: Re-Seeing the Revision Process” for the in-person option, and I’d love to see you there!

What I’m making: Progress!

I have a secret knitting project, but it’s not so secret that I can’t show you a bit of it. I just can’t tell you for whom I am knitting it. The pattern is Clockwork by Stephen West, and it’s one of those knits that’s perfect for carrying around, which is an absolute necessity right now. It’s gotten me through a few Zoom meetings, too.

What I’m reading: The Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc

It feels like cheating to tell you about a book I’m teaching to my first-year students, but it’s so much fun and I’m so disappointed that it took until the Netflix series Lupin was released for me to discover the world of Arsène Lupin that I’m telling all and sundry about it now. The character of Lupin is clever and charming, and though the stories follow a roughly predictable pattern—set-up, heist/escapade, denouement in which Lupin himself gets to explain to someone exactly how he did what he did, which is, of course, the beloved trajectory of thefts and mysteries, from Ocean’s Eleven to Columbo—the pattern is quite satisfying. The Lupin stories are also the kind of reading that keeps one on their toes: sometimes the narrator is who he says he is, and sometimes he is not, and though the artifice is pretty blatant, I still find it delightful.

Would I use these stories to teach fiction writing? Maybe not.

Would I use these stories to teach a perfect way to spend a rainy evening, with a favorite beverage and a cat? Absolutely.

What I’m writing: In addition to the above, Natural History’s Echoes, my Ploughshares blog essay on Andrea Barrett’s new collection, as mentioned in the previous installment of Loomings, is now up!